WoW and Real Life Skills: Handling Money

We all spend our time farming gold, whether its just naturally from doing quests, or if you’re crafting and selling on the auction house to maximise profits. We all also spend our time in the real world making and spending money, in order to survive, to have the things we want, and to do interesting things on our own or with our families.

But how many of us are insanely rich in World of Warcraft, but not as great with money in real life? This article is part of a series which is going to look at how you can use some of the skills you learn from making gold in WoW to help yourself in real life.

Firstly…

Lets look at a basic model for making gold in WoW. You buy herbs from the auction house, make them into flasks or potions, and resell them for a profit. Here the obvious factor that matters here is the profession in question. What skills do you have? Could you apply them to do a similar thing in real life?

Take for example, a chef, or baker. They buy in raw ingredients from their supplier (which is the hypothetical auction house), they cook them up (using their hypothetical profession), then resell them to whoever needs or wants them (the hypothetical auction house again).

Consider what abilities or skills you possess in real life. Think about what you could potentially make an investment in, to change and make into something better which you know will sell for more than the cost to make it. I’m not going to list everything I can think of here, because I would essentially be covering every job in the world.

Lets talk about…

…marketing. This is a pretty big one I think. We’ve already spoken about thinking with your real life skills and converting those in to something profitable. But what about marketing those things?

Almost all of us have said something in the Trade channel. Have you ever ran a raid group? Or looked for one? Or tried to buy or sell something? Maybe not, but we’ve all seen it.

It’s clear to say a well written message is much better received than something which makes you look stupid, or a bunch of spam. “IWNT 2 BY A FLASK” in trade makes people not really want to trade with you, whilst “WTB all flasks – price depends on flask. /w for info” is so much cleaner and attracts much more attention.

Was does this mean for you though? Well it means you already know how to market when you’re selling something. I’m not saying don’t market yourself aggressively, but more, ensure you do it in the correct way. Keep it neat, and communicate clearly.

Saving money

Being conservative is something which is not easy to do, in real life or in WoW, but it is an incredibly useful ability to have. If you’re able to put back your expenses on something you don’t really need, you will be putting yourself in a better position when you do need something, or are struggling with something.

Lets take an example; you wouldn’t go and blow all your money on pets the day you are supposed to pick up flasks, food and runes etc. for a big raid, would you?

Theres not too much difference in going out and buying the newest console with the last of your money, when your car needs servicing or you are about to go on a holiday. it sounds absurd, but this a reality. Perhaps a console is a poor example because its one large bulk purchase, but its just as easy to spend the same amount of money by buying take aways three or four times a week in a month, which is definitely more unnoticeable.

What can you do? Put a buffer. If you want to buy something, make sure you leave yourself $1000 or so left in the account. I do this for WoW and in real life and it helps if something goes wrong. You want the newest Xbox? Fine. But make sure you’re still going to have that $1000 dollars in there by the time you get home with it.

Another thing to apply when making purchases, is to literally ask yourself if you need it. I know, this is far easier said than done, but here is a simple way of putting it:

You’re about to buy a $20 DVD – at this point, would you rather have the DVD or the $20? If its the money, you don’t need it, so put it down and keep walking!

To be continued….

I hope this has helped someone to gain some insight into how you can put your already working WoW mind into use in the real world. As this is part of a series, I’ll be dropping the next one very soon, so keep an eye on my blog posts, on /r/woweconomy, and also ensure to follow me on here and on my twitter to get updated whenever I post. Thanks again, and until next time!